#conrad dmitriev

Conrad warned you of these dangers, but you ignored him. Why would you possibly take the advice of someone who betrayed you? His whole story was made up of lies–why he was conveniently in the area the night you came across each other, what exactly he had to do with your car that seemingly sprouted an issue from nowhere, and who he even was altogether. Course, you could've been a touch more scrutinizing…you can't exactly imagine, at least not easily, that a man who lives almost entirely alone in an isolated forest of the country could live comfortably with his sanity still intact. He isn't just an ice fisher that sells his produce to the near-zero visitors of this confusing wasteland. Conrad is a killer. A killer for hire, no less. 

And right now, unbeknownst to you, you're his next target….well, unknowingly until your footsteps halt in the knee-deep snow for a breather, and the softest click sounds right at the base of your skull. You don't need to turn your head to see. Nobody else would make it this far without leaving footprints in this awful snow. 

“Malyshka.” That word bleeds into you with every syllable, puffed hotly over the skin of your ear from behind. It stirs up memories, good ones for once, of that loving nickname uttered in laughter and scorn and a teasing lilt as Conrad takes you by the hand and waltzes you through his living room. The tinny scratchiness of his cheap, portable radio gave the cabin a hum that still resonates in your veins, but you can't go back to that world even if you wanted to. That place will forever be tainted with the memories of Conrad's twisted fascination with you, permanently marred by deceit and thinly-veiled manipulation. 

It doesn't seem like that matters at all to your former lover, however. Because when Conrad grips your arm in that deathly squeeze, you get the sense immediately that he's betting on taking you back. He's going to walk you through the snow right back where you came from, and he's going to be so angry he won't sleep for days. That's what you think.

The butt of his rifle cracking you in the skull isn't what you expected, however. The crunch of bone under the varnished chunk of wood sickens you to the core of your soul, a warmth exploding out from your hair and splattering the ground as you immediately collapse forward. Your dead weight sinks you deep into the snow, but even then, and even in your dazed state, you feel it's much shallower here than before. Maybe that's why Conrad waited to corner you here–maybe it will be easier to pile the snow on top of your body when he kills you in his rage. 

Time slows to a tick all of a sudden. Conrad's boots crunching in the snow around you ripples a series of shivers through you, your warm body growing colder by the minute as he circles you like a hungry predator. Shiiing, click, thummp. The sound of his gun being slung over his shoulder catches your focus, and then the distinct slice through the sheath as Conrad pulls out his knife. You know the one. That thing is big. And sharp. You cut your hand on it once accidentally and he just about lost his mind with worry. Doesn't seem like he's all too concerned about that now, though.

Although his voice carries between the whispers and howls of the wind, you couldn't understand him if you tried. You've lost the privilege of Conrad speaking your language, evidently, because while he is addressing you not a word of it is in English. It's just another way to control you…another way to show you his love, if he were to spin it that way. 

A beat of silence passes without note. He's stopped moving. You can feel him, his body heat, hovering over you from above. The knife is probably just dangling in his hand, wondering if he should drop it or bring your life to an end with force, grant you some kind of small mercy as he takes you apart before finally slitting your throat like a hunted animal. Conrad stands waiting, watching you lie motionless and dizzy in the snow, and even once you feel him sink to his knees on top of you there's no strength in you to move. Blood pools at the base of your neck from the gash he's probably left in your head. I'm going to die. Your own voice ringing from within triggers you into a push, your fingernails digging into hard, packed snow as you try to lift yourself up–but even though he doesn't hit you a second time, Conrad isn't gentle as he grips your neck and shoves you back down. 

“Still.” He quietly mumbles amid the harsh breeze whistling past your ears. “Stay, malyshka.” 

Clearly, he wanted an answer. Your silence is more than enough of one however, and with a swing and an arc of the blade your lover is rrrrrrripping your clothes apart, knife cutting cleanly up the back of the too-thin flannel that you stole in lieu of a proper coat. Through the layers underneath he slices with practiced ease, catching patches of skin with the tip but not allowing the beads of blood to distract him from his task. Your eyes dart sideways to see his gloved fingers carving out a lump of snow from near your head, a few trickles of blood from your wound staining the purity of those white, soft haloes. He raises it quick and your arms tense at the feeling of that sting hitting your bare back–but it isn't the blade first, it's that clump of snow dragging down your flesh…the knife comes straight after that, piercing your aching skin as insult to injury, and his deep, sudden strokes that split you apart have you writhing and kicking out on the ground in agony. 

Pure, violent hatred spills out of you in those moments, your screams echoing off the trees with just the same tremor as the howling, squealing winds blowing through the mountains. Conrad only cares for your pain when it impedes his progress, his knee coming down harshly on your lower back to keep you from squirming away as he makes his cuts. He must be trying to dig your organs out, he's killing you, he's surely tracing out your most valuable spots with such aggressive stabs of unconscionable, burning, violent torment. Will he wait for you to die? Will he make sure before he leaves? Will he drag your corpse back home with him, frozen and stiff, or will he leave you for the wolves and bears and god knows what else out in these woods? 

As your blood drains into the snow, those thoughts become less and less urgent. As your willpower fades into numbness, the cold pressing into your back grows from a sting into a shaking, fragile numbness that spreads outward. You must be dying now, you can only imagine that your body will give out at any moment if Conrad doesn't stop. It hasn't even occurred to you yet that he has stopped, not until you catch a peripheral glimpse of his black-cloaked hand cleaning the blade in the snow. It's your blood that trickles down the handle…and there's so much of it you're on the verge of losing all hope. There's only the tiniest, faintest glimmer left, and it's fading just as fast as your consciousness. 

“...Look how pretty you are now, malyshka.” 

Those words will haunt you into death, you're most certain. They're the last ones to linger in your ears as the whiteness grows dark, and your eyes flutter closed while the sound of a drip, drip, drip echoes your dreamless sleep…

Drip, drip, drip. 

You'd know the sound anywhere. It's easier to listen to without that wind howling in your ears, but it's going to be harder to locate. This time, when your eyes open within the warmth of a closed-in room, gratitude isn't the first thing you feel for surviving another night in this dense nightmare. 

It's pain. Hot, unbearable, searing pain, violating you in senses inconceivable as it crawls in waves down your back; violent, stiffening, and like a hot iron being pressed up and down and up and down on constant repeat. The warm air of the cabin isn't helping at all as it hits your marked flesh, it's only drawing further attention towards the dripping of something warm down your legs, but at the very least you can tell by the pillow you've drooled on that you're not laying on the open wounds. No, you've been left exposed, with the ache in your hips something you hadn't noticed before, and the weight that's shifted the bed alerts you that someone is tending them for you…and he's singing. Gently. Some lullaby in his native tongue, no doubt, as his hands move quietly and carefully up and down the flesh he ruined. 

“Pretty thing.” You can just barely catch a glimpse of him looming from behind, the din of the cabin shadowing the expression on his pale face. Conrad's muttering puts you off at once, but there's nothing you can do about it now. He meant to kill you, but he changed his mind. He took you back to the cabin to rest, and…make up for lost time, if the stickiness of your thighs is any indication. Maybe that mind will be changed again…and you can only hope it does, because whatever he carved into your back, it can't be out of love. No matter how much he's going to try to convince you it is. “You are hurt, love. You want whiskey?” 

What hurts more is that you can feel the smirk in his tone. He's having a laugh at you. You tried to run but I caught you. I'll always catch you. You can never hide from me. That's what he's probably thinking. 

“No…” Somehow, from some deep well of power within you, your voice forms in a trembling resistance to his strength. Conrad's hands covered in balm and fibres of gauze he's tying round you pause, if just for a moment, and in the relative silence with those drip, drip, drips in the background you find the rest of your voice. 

“...I want you dead.”

How laughable. Conrad doesn't laugh, he merely tuts at you–a disapproving parent scolding a young scoundrel. If you weren't so appallingly special to him, he might punish that rejection of his help with a slap or an elbow right into those throbbing wounds that spell out his name. Instead, he dips his head low, and lets his deep, rough whisper creep into your ear and make a home in the deepest pits of fear that reside in your pretty little head.

Each and every milestone was something he put into action, but whether you wanted it or not wasn't even a question in his mind. Of course you wanted it. You were in love, no? Surely you wanted everything that he did, because you were so close you might as well have been the same person. So when it came time for him to bring you that gift he'd been planning for and place it in your lap, he was certain you'd be just as excited as him when you opened it up.

Inside the plain-looking box, amongst crinkly blue-and-pink paper he got in the city, was a soft little onesie and an unopened box of pregnancy tests. For once Conrad's excitement was palpable, he was vibrating as he sat next to you, but he was completely oblivious to the hesitation written plainly on your face as you lifted the baby clothes out of the box.

“My love-”

“It is for you.” He could barely contain himself enough to stay sitting, and hopped up off the bed with his hands clasped and wringing. “Time to try, no? You will be such good mother.”

“Shouldn't we wait?” Your trembling voice fell on deaf ears, made even more evident by the way he started unbuckling his belt while you protested. “I-I don't think I'm ready.”

“Be calm, my love.” He murmured and bent down to ruffle your hair. Was this all nothing more than a joke to him? Something to chuckle about while he unzipped himself in front of you? “There is nothing to fear. You have me–I take care of you.”

As all things done with your lover, they were done his way. He had you bent over first, then spread out on the sheets you both ruined, and again with his palm over your mouth and a whisper in your ear to keep going. To not stop. To not close your legs and whimper, but look back at him over your shoulder and beg for him to give you more.

“Is my baby tired? Oh-” Conrad practically swooned at the sight of your cheek pressed to the sheets, half-squeaking and half-drooling after an endless cycle of tensing and releasing. “So cute, so so cute.” How many times had you cum so far? You had no earthly idea. The only one who knew was your husband, and even he was starting to shake after teasing you over the brink an ungodly amount of times. He lifted you up slowly, sat you back on his lap, and watched as your hips trembled and jerked as his seed rushed out of you into a puddle beneath him. Conrad worked his fingers over your clit and you startled with a gasp–it was too much, it was so sensitive it hurt, but he didn't listen and just chuckled at your weak pulling on his wrist to try and get him off. Only when your nails dug into his knuckles did he separate himself from you, and that was just long enough to instill a sense of relief before he brought it down flat and smacked your wet slit with surprising ferocity.

“That's good, no? You like that?” The sweet lilt to his voice turned and grew darker, more intense as he laid more slaps to your pulsing, leaking cunt. “You are Dmitriev now. You do as I tell you to, because you love me.” Another smack, squared right with your clit, and you gasped in spite of your body that wrestled with the jolts of pleasure before bursting entirely. But even faced with your pussy seizing and gushing with a translucent sheen of ecstasy you'd never tasted before, he just stared, watching, until he brought his fingers down and ground them into you while you were still spasming. This time you squirmed against him entirely and thrashed to get out of his crushing grip, but he wouldn't let go and basked in the spectacle of you squirting mindlessly like he'd placed his thumb over a garden hose.

“Am I not good husband?” He huffed, another harsh slap echoing throughout the cabin. He'd never sounded so…defeated before. Rejection had never suited someone so handsome. “You think I can not be good father? You want other man?”

“N-No-!” You cried out. Smack.

“Why do you lie to me?”

“I-I'm not-” Shluck, smack smack. “I'm not lying!”

Conrad seemed to mull over that for some time while he rubbed circles into your clit, thinking and wetting his fingers at the same time.

“You love me?”

“Yes!” The tips of them dipped inside, just shallow enough to feel them, and then came that sickening shluck-shlick-shluck in your ears as he swirled them through the loads he'd blasted in you and watched it all spill out. Push in, spill out, push in, spill out. Not pregnant yet? He pushed them in all the way to feel you clench hard around his knuckles.

“Then have my baby.” Strands of his black hair fell over your shoulder as he leaned in. His voice felt so cool on your skin you could've sworn he'd breathed out ice. “A little boy, a little girl, does not matter. Just…get pregnant.”

At the very least, the little old couple who ran the shop showed you some kindness. The elderly wife would bring you a cup of tea when you sat down on their sofas to read, and although her husband seemed gruff he would pick through the collection and stack your arms with the true classics. None of that new-modernist trash and those plot hole-ridden novellas people churned out nowadays. Good, solid Russian literature that he insisted would show you the best of their culture, and in his words you sensed a firm if a bit stoic pride in their homeland. They never chastised you for spending the day reading, in fact they seemed to welcome you to bring some life to the shop that sorely missed its customers; the city wasn't nearly as large as others around it and just about on the outskirts of civilization itself. You could hear wolves howling in the night from your hotel room, and although people travelled through for the tiny airport and the port very few ever stayed. 

But there was one who kept coming around, and surprisingly it wasn't you, but a local man who had just so happened to catch your eye.

“That one is Conrad,” The older lady had offered you the information when you caught a glimpse of him leaving one day, the bell tinging overhead as his long, black hair swished out of view into the street. “Such a kind boy. Very strong.” 

He certainly looked like it. Tall, strength concealed beneath a thick coat, dark eyes and sharp features. The scar over his left eye gave him an intimidating aura; he looked alive but not quite warm, he was odd and said little, but he held your attention and snared it like a rabbit in a trap. Sometimes you noticed him walk in after you'd settled into your corner for the day, browsing through an array of titles with careful consideration. He would never pick up a book and set it right back down–he would read at least a few pages, humming and making a soft noise here and there under his breath, before he decided to re-shelve it or take it to the counter to purchase. 

Conrad became a staple of your day before you knew it, despite the fact that you never exchanged words. He never seemed to even acknowledge you save for once; he turned the corner of an aisle and bumped right into you, mumbled an apology in Russian, and sidled past quickly with a hand grazing your shoulder on his way by. You'd felt a shiver of something then, but brushed it off and elected to leave the poor guy alone since he seemed a bit embarrassed. Maybe even shy. Of course, that endeared you more to him, and he started taking up your thoughts more, and more, and more still. 

It wasn't until you moved from the bookshop to the bar after a long day that you came face-to-face with him at his most relaxed. Actually, he came to you–the bartender spoke enough broken English to tell you the drink he set down in front of you was bought by the guy across the room, and when you looked you spotted Conrad's quiet smile as he lifted his own drink to his lips. Figures that it would be a kind gesture of reader's solitude, but then he stood up and made his way towards your side of the bar, pulling the stool out next to you to sit his towering body into it. 

“Privyet.” The sound of his voice soothed the soft clinking and murmured hubbub of the other patrons, deep, low and rough even as he tried to be gentler. He held up his glass to yours and clinked them both together, before holding his free hand to his chest. “Conrad. And you?” 

Your name sounded even sweeter on his tongue as he rolled it around in his mouth, adjusting to the feel of it while he shook your hand with a tight, warm grip. You didn't have to tell him you were a foreigner, he could expect that much from your limited Russian if nothing else. But you went on to spill to him some of the details of your life, what city you lived in, what you did for work, and why you were here in the first place–you came to see a friend you had met online, only to arrive and find that they'd completely ghosted you the second you touched down. 

Conrad showed sympathy for your story, nodding and following along with every word you spoke, just to offer small reassurances or ask questions here and there. For someone so intimidating and well-read, he was so effortlessly polite and tender with you, like there wasn't the cultural or speech barrier between you like there was with most other people you'd met. You couldn't even blame them because it wasn't like you were that familiar with their country in the first place, but Conrad just seemed to understand you right away even when you had to reword things or speak slower for him to pick up each syllable of your sentences. He was hardly anything like the men you were used to interacting with, nothing for boasts or pushy nagging to get you to do things, or just simply interrupting and talking over you with no regard for what you were saying. Conrad tried so hard to understand you, and the more drinks you shared, the easier it was for you to talk and talk and talk his ear off until the night was drawing to a close. It wasn't until your third or fourth drink that you even realized you barely knew anything about the man who had listened so patiently to you, and started prodding at him with questions that he seemed satisfied enough to answer. 

In quick succession you learned that he was nearing 30, he lived in a rural village a couple hours north, he had a younger sister overseas and he got the scar above his eye from the backfire of a gun. He loved fishing and thrilling novellas and spent most of his time hunting or taking care of his community, and the more he talked, the more you admired his humble dedication and the more attractive he became, as if he wasn't already. He wouldn't let you put down any money for your drinks and gently pried your hand off the bartop when you tried, murmuring that a pretty thing like you should never have to pay when there's a gentleman with you. Those little gestures and subtle expressions of dominance sparked a thrill inside you that made you ache for more, and when the time came to leave and you stumbled off the stool just for him to catch you, there wasn't any resistance on your end when he suggested he take you back to your hotel room. 

Despite the darkness creeping into the small town when he swung open the door to the bar, your arms wrapped around his neck and his biceps flexing as he hiked up your legs made for a smooth journey down the road to your temporary home. Conrad hadn't even asked if you wanted to be carried back, he just pulled you up on his back and started walking like you weighed nothing, you were as much as a backpack to his indomitable strength. He found the hotel with no problem, found your room on your key–he stepped inside, and after laying you down on your bed, you barely even noticed him shedding his coat or making sure the door was deadbolted before he came round to see that you were comfortable. 

Your giggles, the innocence with which your plushy body squirmed on the bed…it fueled something in him. Something that had lain dormant for a very, very long time, waiting to be reawakened. With a glance around, he knew there was no risk of being intruded on–he didn't want you to cry and blubber over being discovered doing something naughty. You seemed like the type, as gentle and cutesy as you were. He liked that. 

Conrad knew what you were about as soon as he climbed into bed with you, hoping to cuddle you a little bit while you were out of it, just to feel you rubbing back on him with a little sigh as soon as he touched you. 

“So drunk, eh?” He chuckled under his breath and was pleasantly surprised when you nodded with a lovely little giggle. “Cannot hold your alcohol. Is’ bad for a pretty thing.” Conrad fiddled with the buttons on your jeans, hopeful but cautious, just for his heart to skip a beat when you wiggled back on him again. That slow zzzzzzip that followed rang so loud in your ears you could feel it buzzing, or maybe that was just the liquor brining your brain and making it all so unbearably fuzzy. Conrad's hands slipping beneath your waistband barely registered at first, but you couldn't writhe hard enough to bump him off anyways. You didn’t really want to.

“So easy, baby.” He purred. Just as you gasped at the feel of his fingers brushing right by your underwear, his hands retracted, and his laughter echoed softly off the dingy hotel room as he squeezed your hip over your clothes. “You know I like you, but I am gentleman.” 

As he sat up on the bed, you reached out for him in a whiny plea of “Don't go, pleeeease?”. He just ruffled your hair and placed a kiss on the top of your head. 

“Soon.” He answered patiently. But ‘soon’ couldn't be soon enough; you'd spent weeks alone in this strange country, bored, lonely, and depressed about everything that was out of your control. Your online friend had abandoned you and the authorities wouldn't let you leave–it felt more like a prison than a getaway, and Conrad was so handsome, so sweet, and so exciting…your fantasies swirled about your head and muddled it more. You pulled yourself up with your grip on his collar, and just as he was moving to slide off of you, you yanked him back down with your full weight and pressed him into a kiss. A sloppy, half-0pen one, but a kiss nonetheless. You just didn’t know that from that moment on, Conrad was hooked. 

He let his hands wander under your top as you prolonged it, taking hold of the hem to tug it up and up until he could break off the tantalizing liplock to slip it over your head and toss it aside. He wasn’t altogether in his right mind either, he’d needed so much liquid courage before he even bought you a drink that it was starting to loosen his inhibitions even more. It was difficult to maintain his gentlemanly image when there was a beautiful, intelligent, and kind person that just so happened to be his first crush ever in front of him, his perfect type with that gorgeous figure, and their fingers were digging into his turtleneck to try and pull it off. He let you fumble with it for a bit before chuckling softly, and gently prying your hands off just like he did with your tab to yank it off himself. When he’d imagined this night in his head it was a bit more romantic with some candles and flowers, but this was just as good when he got to feel your lips latching on to his adam’s apple and nipping a light bruise into his fair skin. Even if it wasn’t intentional, you were marking him, and it drove his hands downwards to loosen his belt before he managed to help you get your own bottoms off. There was no doubt that he’d be taking your underwear for later, so he decided to pocket them now before discretely flinging his jeans down and kicking them under the bed. 

In hindsight he really should’ve lit at least one candle, because the dim lighting of the hotel’s dingy lamp didn’t do your figure justice. He could hardly speak in the face of your tender curves, the softness of your legs, and your sweet face once you felt him staring. You squirmed and shut your knees but he shook his head and cooed for you to keep them open, for him to see you in all your glory like he’d always dreamed of. He just conveniently left that last part out for your sake and focused on lifting your legs over his hips, his gaze heated and shadowed with desire in the dark. 

Mine. All of this was his, he wanted to own you in every sense and devote himself to you with every breath he took. Conrad shivered with delight at the sight of your folds glistening at his meager touches, just to glide his fingertips through them and barely hold back a moan at the sound of your sweet little gasp. He eased one in just to explore, and god, he’d never felt something so tight in his life before. You might actually break if he wasn’t careful. So he dragged it out and wetted both fingers with his tongue, before slipping them back in and teasing the edges of your sanity itself with the stretching and curling and prodding of his long digits right into your soft spots; places you never even knew existed and wouldn’t ever forget now that he found them. 

With time, he just couldn’t wait any longer. He’d mapped you out but he needed to feel you, he needed to press your body against him and show you in no uncertain terms that he was everything you needed. The mattress shifted with the weight of his knees shuffling forward, but he still took caution and guided your arms to sling around his neck. The drink had done more to heighten your senses yet he needed to make sure you were still awake, still conscious, and he could tell just how needy you were with the whine on your lips as you tried to kiss him again. So cute. He swore to give you so many kisses you would never have to ask for them again.

“Ah-!” Your soft shriek as he tried to push in the first time startled him, but you clung harder to him with a whimper and he couldn’t stop now. The second time he slipped in and out, sliding helplessly over your clit, and he grunted in frustration. But it was all soothed on that third try when he angled himself in, and gasped himself at how easily you parted for him like he was a knife sinking into warm butter. Now it was really obvious how much the alcohol had settled in, as he slurred a foul compliment in Russian and gripped you hard at your head lolling back, your eyes beautifully glazed-over with his first rough thrust of many. The babbling of his name out of your mouth sparked something primal within him, and in an instant he snapped into his possessive side, tugging you up in his lap to lay back with your weight holding him down. His sizeable arms cinched around the small of your back, and with no hesitation he let his powerful hips do all the work with a sudden shuck, shuck, shucking echoing throughout the room. 

On the other hand, you could barely decipher the slew of harsh words spilling from Conrad’s mouth with every thrust, your mind already muddled enough that you could scarcely believe you were really doing this–going back to your hotel room with a stranger and letting him screw you into oblivion. But no way in hell were you gonna stop him now, not when his mindless bucking was so raw and filthy you could feel the squelch of your walls surrendering to his brute force in your ears. And even so, Conrad’s sweetness still shone through in the protective squeeze of his hand on the nape of your neck, and the way he smothered your lips in desperate kisses that almost seemed to fuel his incessant chasing of your warmth. His arms encircled your body and dwarfed you by comparison; safe, tight, and devoted like no embrace you’d ever received before. He wasn’t concerned with preserving the image of you in his brain to get off to again later, but rather wanted you to remain protected and comfortable in his presence even when he was fucking into you from below like an animal. 

Conrad’s fingers snaked lower to get a handful, but aside from copping a feel he gripped your ass in his palm to guide you down lower–not just to fit more of himself inside, but also to watch you writhe so cutely once his wiry hairs ground against your clit. Somehow he knew you would like it, but maybe not how much until you started to tremble under the onslaught. His hand shot up to grab you by the back of the head, and he pressed your forehead to his with his eyes wide open in an intense stare. The murmurs of a word you would soon recognize as “cum” reverberated throughout your whole being, over and over again like a prayer until your squirming ceased and he let slip a gasp at the spasming of your walls around him. Conrad’s head tilted back and he cried out in bliss that couldn’t be held back a moment longer, his plan to pull out and paint your face going straight out the window the instant he felt you cumming around him. A good, hard thrust plummeted his self-control to the ground, and with a groan he twitched and pulsed within you before soaking your unsuspecting cunt with a creampie you wouldn’t soon forget. He didn’t even know the word in English, but he could tell he had accomplished it with one glance down over your exhausted body to see the puddle he’d made between you. 

“Ah…there, lyubimaya. Got you.” Careful as he could be with your lovingly battered body, he braced your weight against him while turning you over on the sheets, and reoriented you to let you lay on the drier side on a sea of comfortable pillows. It was the least you deserved, after all, especially after enduring his rather…intense manner of lovemaking. 

Before you could babble anything intelligible you'd already slumped back against the bed, well on your way to being half-asleep with the afterglow of your orgasm, the exhaustion, and the liquor to boot. Conrad gently stroked your hair in the meanwhile, and as you drifted off you swore you sensed the softness of his lips on yours as he murmured one last thing you couldn't quite hear. 

If not for the ache in your back and the bleariness of your vision, your slumber felt so brief you might've believed it lasted only a few seconds. Light shone in through the curtains to pass over your face and you paused, confused, before rubbing the sleep from your eyes and sitting up slowly. The sound of someone clearing their throat had your head whipping to your side, and a warm-faced man with familiar black hair stared back at you from his seat, a book laid over his lap and a smile tinting his cheeks. 

“Good morning.” Conrad greeted you casually, and you were almost tempted to believe that this was all as normal as his even tone made it sound. 

“Conrad?” With a shake of your head to clear the dizziness, you squinted, trying to discern whether this was all still a dream. But it was far too vivid to be anything but reality, so…did that mean that last night wasn't a dream, either? “Did you…have you been here all night?” 

He nodded. The book thunked softly as he closed it and reached over to set it on the nightstand, his every movement just as poised and calm as you'd come to expect despite the puzzling circumstances. He stood with a soft grunt, slid the chair back against the wall, and when he turned back to face you his eyes glinted with a hint of something ominously thrilling. 

“You like me too, yes?” It took you aback, but his blunt questions were somewhat refreshing. As shy as you were you managed to mumble an affirmative ‘yes’, and that was enough for him. “Good. We get to know each other–so lonely here, no? That is why I came to see you.” 

To…see you? He chuckled and brought your attention back to him in a moment, with a hand perched on the buckle of his belt. 

“Very pretty. You would be good match for me, and the sex is good. Fantastic. We have common interest–I will take good care of you.”

“What?” Your heart skipped at the mention of the word ‘match’. Did things naturally move this quickly on this side of the world, or was he just a strange case? Either way, you couldn't decide whether you were flattered or shocked. The bed dipped and squeaked with his weight as he sunk a knee into it, slowly crawling his way towards you like a panther until he loomed over you on all fours, elbows perched on either side of your head to cage you in like an animal. The way he grinned alone with all those teeth felt on the brink of feral, and caused a few memories from last night to flash into your head. Maybe all that really wasn’t a dream after all…

“I am your saviour. You would have been meat–that internet man was not your friend.” He shook his head to emphasize, though the way he fiddled with the covers to slowly tug them down didn't make him look any safer. “Pretty thing deserves a good man. I am a good man, my sweet.” As he said so, he leaned in, so close as to puff his warm breath over your skin…and finally, the kiss you shared struck a match inside you that melted away all your hesitation and self-restraint. The fact that he even knew about your online friend was daunting, but even so you couldn't help but believe every word he said. Perhaps he really did save you from a predator hoping to lure you into his trap…and maybe you didn't altogether mind repaying him for that unexpected kindness. 

“Stay here with me,” He whispered, careful and soft like the lover he had always wanted to be. “And I will care for you until we rot, my baby.” 

Things had spun out of your hands so quickly you weren't sure what to make of it. Conrad's breath puffed hotly from your ear down to your neck, he dressed you down with swift fingers that couldn't bear to be apart from your skin a moment longer. You might never know that it was him that had posed as your friend, and that he was the one who had spent time getting to know you until he could finally convince you to come to his country. How he knew exactly what books you liked and never needed to ask, because he'd staked out the village and predicted exactly where you would go, down to the room number you would pick at this very hotel and the bookshop you would while the hours away at. He knew everything about you for the simple reason that he loved you–and he desperately wanted you to be part of his life, even if he had to lie, and bribe, and steal to get it. 

Conrad would absolutely let you get sloshed when you try to drink with him, especially the first time. He'll let you think that you can handle as much as him, or even just the kind of liquor he drinks (homemade vodka, baby <3) and when you hit your limit and realize too late just how drunk you really are, Conrad will lay you down on his bed and just enjoy the view.

He'll get down on his side and watch you, how you squirm, or breathe heavy, or just lay still--he'll listen to you slur as you complain about how badly the room is spinning, and hush your little cries so sweetly when you start feeling sick. Any time you hold your hands over your face he gently pries them away, cause he wants to see you when you're this cute and vulnerable. He'll help you get those pesky clothes off, too. It's even better if you cling to him, cause he can just feel your little heartbeat racing as you whine and nuzzle your face into his chest. He can't help himself; he finds it so unbearably sexy to see you so weak over something as simple as booze. It reaffirms his natural instinct to keep you protected, because you're definitely not prepared for the world--not because you're incompetent, but because you're just too gentle and beautiful for a society that will do nothing but take advantage of you.

He'll soon find himself thinking of you like that when he's on contracts. Lining up the shot, holding the breath in his throat just before he pulls the trigger on the unsuspecting scum--he thinks of your sweet face, your laughter, your smile, and he finds himself wishing he could let loose a second bullet. The swine that he kills are horrendous, evil, and heartless people who reside in the lowest dregs of society, and to think of you falling victim to those same atrocities is enough to have him scowling the whole way home. He can only relax once you're back in his arms, and even then, he still worries. At the back of his mind, he'll always worry about you becoming prey.

Adrian

Conrad